Slip
by deadcell
Summary: Elena likes the cold.


_**A/N:** Written for adventchallenge on Livejournal! Prompt was "Elena teaches Reno to ice skate during their first winter at Healen. Use of ice skate blades as comic relief or potential weaponry are welcome."_

**Slip**

"I can think of several _practical_ applications for these," Reno says. He's sitting on the ice, legs splayed and bent slightly at the knees. He hunches over to tap at a skate-blade with a black-gloved finger as he looks up at Elena with a glare sharp as the metal he touches.

She raises an eyebrow as she seems to float slowly past him, her skates hissing softly against the ice.

"Like?"

"I dunno," he sighs. His breath is a white cloud in the cold air. "Could be reconstituted as a knuckle knife, what with all this material here. For one."

Elena skids to a graceful and quiet stop, crosses her arms.

"You've always been _creative_, that's for sure," she sighs, and lets her arms drop to her sides. "You gonna get up or what? Come on _rookie_," she says, making a point to over-enunciate the offending term. "I'm continuing your skating lesson."

"My ass hurts."

"Stop falling on it."

"I can't get up."

"Then I'll leave you here."

"Fine," Reno sighs. He lays back on the iced-over pond, spreading his arms and legs wide. His limbs push through the thin layer of scraped-up ice; sarcasm bites through his words. "I'll just die here on the ice."

"Dramatic," Elena says, and braces a foot behind her to bend down and grab one of his feet. She's got great balance; always had impressive strength, so when she pushes off with her other foot to drag him along as she draws backwards, the motion seems almost effortless.

Reno grimaces at the scrape of cold that seems to seep through his jacket to his skin. "You can't keep this up forever," he says. He lets himself go limp in an effort to stop her with dead weight.

"You're a lightweight," she responds, but she nonetheless lets his foot drop to the ice as she straightens, gliding away from him with the momentum. The blade of his ice skate smacks the ice with a sharp, loud clatter; Reno jumps at the reverberation through his limb.

"Ow," he says, and sits back up.

"You deserved it," Elena says as she skates back to his side. She looks down at him, brow furrowed. "I've never seen someone be such a baby about this."

He looks up at her, the blue of his eyes amplified to a startling degree by the surrounding landscape of white. "Why you so good at this anyway?"

Elena crouches next to him; he wipes wind-coaxed water from his eyes.

"That rink on the upper plate," she shrugs. "Used to skate in winter, before I worked for Shinra. Never forgot how to do it, I guess."

"Hm," he says. "Like riding a bike, yeah?"

"Yeah. I also like the cold."

"I can tell," he says, a slight chattering of his teeth rattling the tail end of his words. He pulls his scarf up over the lower half of his face. "Only person I know who wanted to vacation at _Icicle_ fucking _Inn_," he says, voice muffled.

"It was cold in the crater," Elena says abruptly, and Reno tenses a little, because the residual twists of _that_ topic are still difficult to navigate.

He looks at her, and listens. She doesn't look at him.

"But," she shrugs, absently touching a rough scar below her cheekbone- "doesn't stop me from enjoying it still."

She sits on the ice next to him, and after she's settled he can't help but lean closer and push his face against hers, rub his nose against her temple; she smells like the cold, fresh snow and air.

"Your nose is cold," she says.

He pulls back to look at her, and she can tell he's smiling, a softer version of that familiar leer.

"Well then you must like my nose too, no?" he asks, softly.

She looks down at her lap, and he stares at her, smile fading when she doesn't respond.

"Come on," she finally says. She pushes herself back to her feet, holds out a hand to him.

"Never thought I'd be the one helping _you_ up," she adds, and grins.

And it's true, Reno thinks, despite these silliest of circumstances—-Elena trying to teach him to_ ice skate_, for fuck's sake. He figures it's just something to do, another tiny step against the undercurrents of loneliness, pervasive and bone-deep as freezing wind.

He takes her hand, and she holds it while they make their way back to the edge of the pond; it's his left, and the warmth of twined fingers is unfamiliar, strange in lieu of the hard, cold weight of weaponry. It's almost awkward, but he holds on anyway; he doesn't fall again.

"Glad you're here," he finally says.

He can see her nod in his peripheral vision, a sharp, angled movement not unlike a military salute, and he knows she knows what he means. And when the skates are finally off, when their feet are rooted back in the soft crush of snow as they walk back to a place that isn't quite _home_, it doesn't feel as strange when she takes his hand again.


End file.
